Brownback in election denial

Our editorial last Sunday asked whether Gov. Sam Brownback would listen to voters and be willing to change course. An interview he did recently made clear the answer is “no.”

Brownback told KCPT, the public television station in Kansas City, that the primaries were not a repudiation of his policies. Instead, he blamed the defeat of many conservative incumbents on uninformed voters and the media.

Brownback said that the core issue of the election was school funding, and he speculated that most Kansans likely think K-12 funding went down 5 to 15 percent.

“The fact of the matter is that it’s gone up by 8 percent,” he said.

Brownback faulted the media for the public’s misplaced concerns about education funding.

“The media has participated a lot in this misinformation,” he said.

Asked whether school districts are just imagining their funding problems, Brownback acknowledged districts are facing cost increases and that about a third of the funding increase went to the state pension system – money that districts can’t use to pay their bills.

Support for schools was an important issue of the election – and groups backed by the Kansas Chamber of Commerce tried to portray conservative incumbents as champions of public education. But Brownback’s fiscal policies also were a major concern.

When asked whether his income tax cuts have created a budget problem for the state, Brownback said they had not.

“We have a problem, but it’s not that,” he said, blaming the state’s revenue shortfalls on declines in the agriculture and oil and gas industries.

Those market declines are certainly a factor. But so is the fact that Kansas collected nearly $600 million less in tax revenue this past fiscal year than it did in 2013.

Brownback also argued that his tax cuts, including exempting pass-through income on more than 300,000 businesses, have been a success. He cited growth in new small businesses and an inflow of revenue from Missouri to Kansas.

Brownback didn’t mention that the state’s job growth rate for the past 12 months (0.2 percent) is the seventh worst in the nation. Or that a national report in March ranked the Kansas economy 46th in the nation. Or that his budget director was about to tell state agencies to study the possibility of a 5 percent budget cut.

If his policies are such a success, why is Brownback’s approval rating so low – only 15 percent in a recent statewide survey? Once again, Brownback blamed the media.

“When you parse it and you break it down, a lot of it is media-driven,” he said.

In an informal press conference Friday, Brownback changed his story, saying the election results reflect “budget frustration.” But he still dismissed concerns about his tax policies.

Last Sunday’s editorial said Brownback should learn from the election results and accept that voters want a new direction. Right now, he’s in denial.

This story was originally published August 14, 2016 at 12:07 AM with the headline "Brownback in election denial."